Black Hoods in the Square

It was a bright and sunny morning, and a great crowd had gathered on the grassy expanse of Leopoldville's Grand Place. Small boys were perched in trees to get a better view, and teen-agers jammed the roof of the nearby African culture center. In the center of the square, cordoned off by police, stood a makeshift scaffold. A red circle had been painted in the middle of its collapsible wooden platform. A strong, rough rope hung down from the crossbar above. A row of open coffins, trimmed with gold and lined with white sheets, lay waiting on the ground below. Four enemies of Army Strongman Joseph Mobutu were about to be hanged, and to celebrate the occasion Mobutu had declared a holiday, and invited all of Leopoldville to attend.

Frustrated General. Horrifying as the scene was, it only documented the accelerating deterioration of Mobutu and his military regime, which seized power last November, supposedly to reform the Congo. Frustrated at every turn, Mobutu has in recent months been lashing out wildly at everyone who seemed to stand in his way, and his list of assorted traitors and plotters has grown to include foreign embassies as a group, the Belgians in particular, ex-Premier Moise Tshombe and the entire Congolese Parliament. The four hanged last week had supposedly been foiled in a plot to kill Mobutu and his two top aides, Premier Leonard Mulamba and Armed Forces Commander Louis Bobozo.

As the government told it, the principal plotters were Evariste Kimba, who had been the Congo's last civilian Premier, and onetime (until 1964) Finance Minister Emmanuel Bamba. Together with two other ex-Ministers they were accused of trying to get the Leopoldville army garrisons to rise against Mobutu. The attempt failed, charged the regime, only because the officers with whom they were plotting remained secretly loyal to Mobutu--and the authorities arrested them hours before the uprising was supposed to have started.

The true facts of the "plot" may never be known. It seems clear that some form of action against the government was in train. Word spread through Leopoldville that at least four Western embassies had been approached for support.

Two days after their arrest, Kimba and the other three, their bodies badly bruised and their wrists painfully bound, were hauled before a military tribunal. As a noisy throng looked on, the tribunal gave each a brief hearing; each denied any intention of killing Mobutu and his colleagues. The court deliberated six minutes before finding them guilty and sentencing them to be hanged --36 hours later--in the public square. Appeals for clemency from the diplomatic corps were turned down.

The crowd began arriving at 6 a.m., quickly grew to 125,000. At 8:52 a.m. the four condemned conspirators, wearing black hoods and blue shorts, arrived in a convoy of covered Jeeps.

Up Nine Steps. Three Congolese doctors in long white coats stationed themselves solemnly near the gallows. Four military buglers marched in to give the affair a martial flavor. At 9:22, the officer in command barked an order, and Evariste Kimba, the first victim, was escorted from his Jeep, helped up the nine steps of a wooden ladder, guided to the middle of the scaffold and halted on a red circle. The hangman fitted the noose around his neck, and the buglers sounded the last post. With that the platform was yanked away, and the man who six months before had been Premier of the Congo fell to his death. Instead of the cheers that Mobutu had hoped for, there was only silence from the onlookers. Three more traitors were still to be hanged, but the crowd began to disperse. The streets of the city, usually gay, were soon empty, and bars were closed despite the holiday.

Mobutu had had his way, but his spectacle might well return to haunt him. There was talk of resignations among the civilian advisers who keep his government running. The thousands of Belgian residents, who still control most Congolese commerce and industry, were nervous about the future. What they feared was that blood was once again starting to flow in the Congo.

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